‘Rising company profitability shows signs of being shared across the expanding workforce, which has generated the largest annual rise in wages and salaries paid since the commodity price boom peaked almost six years ago. Growth in the national wages and salaries bill accelerated to 5.1 per cent in the first quarter, up from 4.4 per cent in the December quarter, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The bureau also reported that company profits rose almost twice as much as economists forecast.’